Daily Scripture:
1 Peter 4:8 More than anything, keep loving each other actively; because love covers many sins.[1 Peter 4:8 Proverbs 10:12] 9 Welcome one another into your homes without grumbling. 10 As each one has received some spiritual gift, he should use it to serve others, like good managers of God’s many-sided grace — 11 if someone speaks, let him speak God’s words; if someone serves, let him do so out of strength that God supplies; so that in everything God may be glorified through Yeshua the Messiah — to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. (Complete Jewish Bible).
Reflection Questions:
In Jumanji, Dr. Bravestone (school nerd Spencer’s game character) said, “This is a video game, which means we all have special skills. We can help each other.” Too often, we have a “one size fits all” idea of what it means to serve. In fact, there are as many unique forms of service as there are people. The apostle Peter’s letter called Christians to “use whatever gift you have received to serve others.” The call is to be yourself, as long as “being yourself” includes being a servant to God and others.
- In Romans 12:1-6, the apostle Paul noted that we all have gifts—abilities to do various things particularly well in ways that bring us deep inner joy. What gifts are you currently using? How do you see God blessing others through your gifts? (If you don’t know what your spiritual gifts are, Resurrection offers a class to help. The next one starts tonight, July 9. Click here to register, or www.cor.org/spiritualgifts for information about future classes.)
- In 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, Paul said that using our gifts without love renders them useless to God. In today’s reading, Peter, in a shorter, less-poetic form, made the same point. What makes love so vital as the environment in which we use our widely varying gifts? Who do you know who is finding joy by using his or her gifts in love?
Jordan Chalker
Jordan is a summer intern with our Local Impact Ministries at Resurrection Leawood. She will be a senior at Kansas State. After she graduates, she hopes to get a Master's degree in School Psychology and eventually work with high school students. She grew up in the church has been on 6+ mission trips, and her internship this summer lets her carry out that passion for missions. She also loves to spend time at the lake with family and friends, and she spends her free time playing with her puppy Ellie (an Aussiedoodle).I went through confirmation in the Spring of 2010, and we took the spiritual gifts assessment as one of our lessons. My top gift was "encouragement." As a 13-year-old, I had no idea what to do with that (honestly, as a 21-year-old I still struggle). I knew that I liked to make people feel good and help people through hard times. But I felt that I got this “gift” handed to me from God and I was now being sent on my way to apply it to the world around me. Easy, right? I think this happens a lot with us as Christians. We have rules, regulations, and sometimes, gifts that we learn about from Scripture, prayer, or tests, and we feel we have to act in a certain way to accurately portray our faith. When in reality, that’s not at all how the Lord intended it to be for us.
I am reading Bob Goff’s book Everybody Always. He has a chapter where he talks about how as Christians, we can be seen as always having an agenda with people we meet or come in contact with. But we shouldn’t spend so much time on these agenda items, on telling people what they should and shouldn’t do. We should be using these gifts or Scriptures to love people. We need to meet them exactly where they are. Loving people doesn’t mean that we control their actions or their conduct. Instead, “loving people means caring without an agenda,” as Bob Goff would say. People are going to learn and grow so much more when they are loved and accepted for who and where they are, instead of being talked at.
This section from Bob Goff’s book showed me a whole new perspective for using these gifts we are given. Instead of using my gift of encouragement, for example, to "encourage" people to follow all the things that Scripture says, I can stop and listen to their stories, meet them where they are, and remind them how much Jesus loves them. I can begin to encourage them by being the listening ear that shows them what Jesus’s unconditional love and forgiveness looks like, instead of just telling them. I mean, hey--actions speak louder than words, right?
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You might also like:
- Prayer Tip: Game ON!
- “Be kind, compassionate, and forgiving”—like God
- Jesus' vision of true human greatness
- “The goal I pursue”
- Seeing again
- Or download this week's printable GPS.
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Leawood, Kansas 66224, United States
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